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Poetry Sound and Sense Full Text
Poetry Sound and Sense Full Text
Adapted from Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry by Arp & Perrine
For Use with the Poetry Unit
Chapter One ² What Is Poetry?
Poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient. The most primitive
people have used it and the most civilized have cultivated it. In all ages and in all
countries poetry has been written and eagerly read or listened to by all kinds of
people. The intelligent and the sensitive individual appreciate it greatly and it has
appealed, in its simpler forms, to the uneducated and to children. Why? Firstly
because gives pleasure, People have read it, listened to it, or recited it because they
liked it, because it gave them enjoyment. But this is not the whole answer. Poetry in
all ages has been regarded as important, not simply as a form of amusement.
Rather it has been regarded as something central to existence, something having
unique value to the fully realized life, something without which we are spiritually
impoverished. To understand the reason for this we need to have an understanding
of what poetry is ʹ provisional, because people have always been more successful
at appreciating poetry than at defining it.
Initially poetry might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says
it more intensely than does ordinary language. In order to understand this fully, we
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different occasions to say quite different kind of things: in other words, language
has different uses.
Perhaps the most common use of language is to communicate information. We
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Washington was the first president of the United States, That the bromine and
iodine are the members of halogen group of chemical elements. This we might call
the practical use of language; it helps us to understand the ordinary level of
business living.
But it is primarily to communicate information that novels and short stories
and plays and poems are written. These exist to bring us a sense and a perception
of life, to widen and sharpen our contacts with existence. Their concern is with
experience. We all have an inner need to live more deeply and fully with greater
awareness, To know the experience of others and to know better our own
experience. The poet, form his own store of felt, observed, or imagined
experiences, selects, combines, and recognizes. He creates significant new
experiences for the reader-‐-‐significant because focused and formed-‐-‐in which the
reader can participate and that he may use to give him a greater awareness and
understanding of his world. Literature, in other words, can be used as a gear for
stepping up the intensity and increasing the range of our experience and as a glass
for clarifying it. This is the literary use of language, for literature is not only an aid to
living but a mean to living. (A third use of language is as an instrument of
persuasion.)
Suppose, for instance, we are interested in eagles. If we want simply to acquire
information about eagles, we may turn to an encyclopedia or a book of natural
history. There we find that the family of Falconidae, to which eagles belong, and
other information about height, weight and etc. But unless we are interested in this
information only for practical purposes, we are likely to feel a little disappointed, as
we thought we had grasped the feather of the eagle but not its soul. True, we have
The primary purpose of this unit is to develop your ability to understand and
appreciate poetry. Here are some preliminary suggestions:
1. Read a poem more than once. A good poem will no more yield its full
meaning on a single reading than will a Beethoven symphony on a single hearing.
Two readings may be necessary simply to let you get your bearings. And if the poem
is a work of art, it will repay repeated and prolonged examination. One does not
listen to a good piece of music once and forget it; one does not look at a good
painting once and throw it away. A poem is not like a newspaper, to be hastily read
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2. Keep a dictionary by you and use it. It is futile to try to understand poetry
without troubling to learn the meanings of the words of which it is composed. You
might as well attempt to play tennis without a ball. One of your primary purposes
while in high school and college should be to build a good vocabulary, and the study
of poetry gives you an excellent opportunity. A few other reference books also will
be invaluable. Particularly desirable are a good book on mythology (like Edith
,ĂŵŝůƚŽŶ͛ƐMythology) and a Bible.
3. Read so as to hear the sounds of the words in your mind. Poetry is written
to be heard: Its meanings are conveyed through sound as well as through print.
Every word is therefore important. The best way to read a poem is just the opposite
of the best way to read a newspaper. One reads a newspaper as rapidly as possible;
one should read a poem as slowly as possible. When you cannot read a poem aloud,
lip read it: Form the words with your tongue and mouth even though you do not
utter them. With ordinary reading material, lip-‐reading is a bad habit; with poetry, it
is a good habit.
4. Always pay careful attention to what the poem is saying. Though you
should be conscious of the sounds of the poem, you should never be so exclusively
conscious of them that you pay no attention to what the poem means. For some
readers, reading a poem is like getting on board a rhythmical roller coaster. The car
starts, and off they go, up and down, paying no attention to the landscape flashing
past them, arriving at the end of the poem breathless, with no idea of what it has
been about. This is the wrong way to read a poem. One should make the utmost
effort to follow the thought continuously and to grasp the full implications and
suggestions. Because a poem says so much, several readings may be necessary, but
on your very first reading you should determine the subjects of the verbs and the
antecedents of the pronouns.
5. Practice reading the poems aloud. When you find one you especially like,
make friends listen to it. Try to read it to them in such a way that they will like it
too. (a) Read it affectionately, but not affectedly. The two extremes oral readers
often fall into are equally deadly. One is to read as if one were reading a tax report
on a railroad timetable, unexpressively, in a monotone. The other is to elocute, with
artificial flourishes and vocal histrionics. It is not necessary to put emotion into
reading a poem. The emotion is already there. It only wants a fair chance to get out.
It will express itself if the poem is read naturally and sensitively. (b) Of the two
extremes, reading too fast offers the greater danger than reading too slow. Read
slowly enough that each word is clear and distinct and that the meaning has time to
sink in. Remember that your friends do not have the advantage, as you do, of
having the text before them. Your ordinary rate of reading will probably be too fast.
(c) Read the poem so that the rhythmical pattern is felt but not exaggerated.
Remember that poetry, with few exceptions, is written in sentences, just as prose
Lines 4, 8, and 12 are so nearly identical that we may let line 4 represent all
three:
For thou must die. 4
Surveying what we have done so far, we may with some confidence
say that the prevailing metrical foot of the poem is iambic; we also
reasonably may hypothesize that the second and third lines of each stanza
are tetrameter (four-‐foot) lines and that the fourth line is diameter. What